Our School Vision

Our school is a community where each person is valued as a child of God. We are a Church of England school, inspired and guided by the life and teaching of Jesus. We work together to create a caring, friendly and safe school family, to enable the whole school community to flourish and each person reach their full God-given potential.

This document is devised to support this vision, and has the following intentions:

· Pupils are empowered to develop the hope and perseverance necessary to engage the challenges of Art in the context of school and the wider world.

· Teaching staff seek out every opportunity to ensure that all pupils flourish in Art lessons, developing wisdom and creativity through an ambitious and broad curriculum that challenges expectations, deepens knowledge and develops skills.

· Art lessons are inclusive, so everyone is valued and respected – and tolerance and diversity are celebrated.

Intent

At Donnington Wood Junior School, we firmly believe that Art is an indispensable component of children’s learning journey. It offers them opportunities to share their own unique creativity, to express themselves and to understand the significance of Art throughout history. The Arts represent some of humanity’s most elevated forms of creativity and we hope to captivate and motivate our children to experiment, innovate and craft with artistic expression.

In Art, we aim to:

• Teach children a work in a range of artistic mediums, for example, painting, collage, drawing and sculpture.
• Draw inspiration by the work of significant artists throughout historyand some historic periods.
• Teach children a progression of artistic skills and concepts as they move through the school.
• Ensure children can identify all the elements of art throughout school, then practice and refine these skills from Year 3 to Year 6.
• Highlight the link between Art and emotion.
• Link our artwork to our school values of Friendship, Perseverance and Hope.
• Give children opportunities to use a variety of materials and art media so that children can become confident with artistic creativity and styles when creating their own artwork.
• Art across the year groups has a clear progression and develops sequentially each year so that technique and knowledge are increased each year.

Implementation

Art is taught in termly blocks linked to an aspect of our Curriculum. Children are introduced to a significant artist or period in art history and create their own artworks inspired by their focal artwork or artist.

Children are given the opportunity to engage with a Cold Task – this ensures teachers are aware of children’s current skill level and prior knowledge of a particular artist or time period.

Children are taught to explore their likes and dislikes using SPARK (See, Perceive, Ask, Reflect and Know) which encourages them to engage with artistic vocabulary and consider which parts of an artist’s work they would like to try and emulate. They have the opportunity to compare similar or contrasting artistic styles which they can then use to inspire them in the next stage. During this stage, the children also have the opportunity to break down which skills they will need to use to reach the outcome of their artist; these are them experimented with and practiced in the following lessons.

Children are shown the skills that are expected in their year group so they are aware of the progression of skills they will build upon as they move through school. This document is shared with them so the children understand which targets they would have already achieved and what their next steps are.

Children are able to take part in a carousel of activities which include the breadth of the artistic process. This will include sketching, designing, planning and experimenting before moving on to creating their final piece. This will be assessed as their Hot Task.

Impact

By the end of Key Stage 2, we aspire that our Art curriculum will have had the following impact on pupils:

Children will be inspired to practise a range of artistic skills both in and out of school.

Children will have the knowledge and display the skills outlined in the National Curriculum.

Children will have a deep knowledge of artists throughout history and some historic knowledge of art through the ages.

Children will link their artistic expression to our school values.

Children will express themselves using their progressing skills in various mediums.

Children can express their likes, dislikes and other opinions on famous artworks.

Children can evaluate their own progress and next steps.